Hallo guys, i have a problem with one of my coins and nobody can help me, as you all know we have a Grading company here in South Africa that just started, but they are NOT realy new as all the books that PCGS and NGC has regarding SA coins was written by one of the owners and maybe a grader of the new company. His name is "Brian Herns" so he has a lot of knollidge of SA coins and helps NGC and PCGS a lot regarding our coins they grade. They are also working on the Sheldon scale method!! My problem is: i took a German coin 2 weeks ago for them to check it to see if it is real, here is the answers: The coin seems to be real as it is 22crt gold,the weight is right, the with is right, the od is right, the scan of the front and back is right, but instead of getting a .900 fineness grade, they get .9200 meaning there is a little more gold persentage wise, i was there when they did the tests a couple of times. Now because it is a German coin they dont want to grade it, because they dont have the expert knollidge of forein coins. Can or is that a major problem?? we all know fake coins does not have the purety of gold and the weight and many other factors here we have a coin that is a tiny bit over the limit. Can someone help me out here? The coin is struck in 1875 20 MARKS gold!! Is there not a gold persentage bracket for the .900crt? a bit lower or a bit over i dont know. Please help me out on this one. regards
Hey, I don;t know about this particular coin. BUT US gold coins have been faked by making the fakes out of gold forever ! If the collectibility of a coin is worth more than the gold, it's often faked ! The reason gold is used it for the reasons you give. People do not suspect a gold coin to be fake if it's gold. But say a St. Gaudens $20 gold coin could be worth $250,000 USD or more. An ounce of gold is $1600. So If I were to fake one, I sure wouldn;t scrimp on the metal. Maybe your coin is in one of those situations ? Now I am thinking that even in 1875, the German Mint was highly unlikely to put too much gold in a coin. Probably less likely to do so than a counterfeiter. I imagine that's what caused their suspicisions. And they won;t certify it unless they are positive. I like their attitude.
Thank you for your input and i do understand the facts, but the coin has only that one defeit the gold content with .02 the rest is 100% in the spot, now if it was fake other things should fall out of place like the weight, size, prints and the gold content is that not so?
